


Mintrose Tea

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: A Pocketful of Eezo: Xia Shepard x Tali'Zorah vas Normandy [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Normandy SR-1, UST, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 15:51:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9614930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: A quiet conversation on the engineering deck on a long night.  Set between ME1 and ME2.  The stirrings of something beginning.





	

“Couldn’t sleep?” **  
**

Tali’s voice, mechanized through the processors in her suit, barely carried about the hum and whir of the Normandy’s core.  Still, though, it was easy for Shepard to hear it, deserted as the deck was this time of night.  A small part of him was glad to hear it, though he had purposely come down here to be alone.

“How’d you guess?” Shepard asked, rousing himself from where he had been leaning against the console, gazing absently into the core.  He realized he’d given himself a nasty crick in the neck.  Annoyed, he massaged the sore point.

“It is 0300 Earth hours.  You are alone in engineering staring absently into space.  And you look terrible,” Tali explained, walking towards him.

“You’ve got a good eye,” drawled Shepard.

Tali laughed brightly.  She sidled up alongside him, her hands wrapped around a mug of something that smelled good.  He took an experimental sniff, leaning towards her.  Tea of some kind, with a scent redolent of mint.  

“Smells nice.”

“The dextro rations on the Normandy are generally rather unpleasant,” said Tali, “but the tea is quite good.  Turian mintrose.  Garrus picked some up at the Citadel, before half of it was pulverized.  I’d offer you some, but you probably would not appreciate the cramps.”

Shepard chuckled.  “Smelling’s just fine.”  He paused.  “Okay, so I can’t sleep.  What about you?  Why aren’t you sleeping?”

Tali shrugged, cocking her head to one side.  “Lots of reasons.”

“Such as?”

“Worry, mostly.”

“What’s to worry about?” Shepard joked.  “We saved the day.  We’re big damn heroes.”  His laugh sounded hollow even in his own ears.  “And you’ll be going back to the fleet soon.  I can’t imagine a more illustrious return from your pilgrimage.”  He chuckled again.  It didn’t even sound like a laugh now.

“As if going back will be easy, after all I’ve seen?  The fleet is my home, and yet… now I know there is a place for me here, too.”  Tali’s twinned fingers and long thumbs gripped the tea tighter.  She sighed.  “You know as well as I do, Shepard, what’s at stake.  Saren’s dead.  Sovereign is destroyed. But we’ve all seen the official statements; the Council wants to pretend the geth are never coming back, that you’ve chased them away.  And as for the Reapers…”

“I know, Tali.”  He took a deep breath, mintrose sweet on the recycled air.  His chest hurt.  He wished it was because of the dextrose tea, and not because of everything else.  “The war’s just begun, and yet I feel like we’re doing _nothing_ –”  Shepard bit his lip, then stared up at the ceiling, frustrated.

“You’ll never stop fighting, Shepard,” said Tali.  There was a fierceness, suddenly, beneath her words.  He liked it.  “Neither will I.  The geth data won’t be all I take back to the migrant fleet.  I’ll make them understand the threats we face now, and we will not hide from what comes.  You won’t fight alone.”

“Yeah?” said Shepard.  “Good to hear it.”  He scuffed his boot against the floor.  Solid metal.  Reassuring, somehow, and heavy with the thrum of the core.  “I – we’ll miss you here on the Normandy.”

She was quiet for a moment.  “I’ll miss being here too,” said Tali finally.  She shifted closer to him, her mask tilted just so in the way he’d learned meant she was smiling.  “It took me a while to get used to.  The Normandy is so quiet compared to the Rayya.  Not just the ship sounds, but the people, too.  But now I appreciate it.  It is good to come down here and think, sometimes, when there is much to think about.”  She considered, looking at him.  “Do you think of Ashley here?”

The tightness in his chest again, constricting, crushing.  He reached for the steam of mintrose with a shuddering breath, and the knot loosened.  “Command is… sometimes it’s making the call because nobody else can.  And sometimes it’s just sitting with the call afterwards, knowing you did what you did, knowing it can’t be undone.”  He swallowed.  “Yeah, I think about Ash here.  Her family… they understood.  They were proud.  But that doesn’t make up for it.”

“She was a good soldier,” said Tali.  “She made me laugh.  We loved talking shotguns together, and she asked me about quarian poetry.  Which isn’t very good, by the way, but she liked seeing it regardless.”  Tali’s laughter was gentle, tinged with sadness.  “There was nothing that could have been done,” she said.  “She knew that, Shepard.”

“I know,” he said.  “It just doesn’t make it easier.”

Tali reached out, laid a hand on his arm, squeezed.  Let go.  “It will take time,” she said simply.  

He leaned against the console bank, feeling the vibrations from the core wash over him.  They settled into his hollow spaces, shivering in his lungs, in the air held in his mouth, in his belly.  For a moment, he could not tell where the ship sounds ended and his heartbeat began.

The Normandy hummed beneath him.  Tali drank her tea.  

“You should get some sleep, Tali.”

“So should you, Shepard.”  She finished her tea, and raised the cup to him in a silent cheer.  “You look better now.”

Shepard smiled at her, suddenly tired.  It was a good thing.  He needed the sleep.  “I feel better.”  He reached out for her mug.  “I’ve got to go past the kitchen anyway.  I can take this back for you.”

“Sure.”  She held it out to him, and their fingers brushed, a light touch of the thin material of her suit gloves against his fingertips.  Funny, he thought, that that brief connection felt just as rich as the thrum of the Normandy, though he couldn’t say why.  

“Night, Tali.”  He paused in the doorway, glancing back at her.  “Hey.  Thanks.  For everything.”

A tip of her head toward him, a movement both elegant and familiar.  Her voice was nearly lost in the throb of the core, but he could still hear it, could still pick out the faintly mechanized words, kind and warm on a long, empty night.  “You’re welcome, Shepard.  Take care of yourself.”

 _Yes, ma’am,_ he thought, catching one last whiff of mintrose tea.   He grinned to himself as he made his way to bed.


End file.
